


gin joints

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Complicated Relationships, Finn-centric, Future Fic, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Meeting Between Enemies, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Redemption Attempt, Regret, This Will Be Jossed One Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 02:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7296481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war against the First Order drags and Finn—Finn’s just ready for it to be over. He’s willing to give anything a shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gin joints

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bittersnake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake/gifts).



> This fic was written as part of the [Season of Finn Fanworks Challenge](http://starwarsfruitbowl.dreamwidth.org/37991.html) going on over at the [Star Wars Fruitbowl comm](http://starwarsfruitbowl.dreamwidth.org/) in which participants are invited to create and share Finn-centric fanworks.
> 
> It was also inspired by a prompt from [bittersnake](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersnake): parley.

Finn approaches the woman hunched against the bar, elbows planted on the ancient, gleaming wood worn down by years of polishings and glasses pushed and pulled across the surface. Cigarra smoke hangs in the air, swirling through the beams of weak light emanating from luma droids perched in the corners overhead. Cam droids hover alongside them, red-lit eyes blinking in tandem, each focused on the empty gaming tables lined up in the back of the room. Finn turns his face away just in case and climbs onto the stool next to the woman, signaling for a drink with a raised finger and a quick circular jerk of his hand.

“Finn,” she says, just enough emphasis on the final consonant sound to remind him of the name he used to have, the one that used to slide so easily through her accent and settle on him like a title, like something to aspire to. But that was a long time ago and now the reminder of it merely creeps cold down his spine.

He looks around, notes the man at the end of the bar so lost in his drink he might just be asleep. At the opposite end, the bartender chats with other customers. “Phasma,” he replies, quiet to stay beneath the din of the other patrons. “Is it Colonel now? I’ve heard conflicting reports.”

She sneers and raises her glass to peer, intense, at the milky liquid. “I was always a colonel,” she says, only half an explanation, a surprise even after all these years. She sips and hisses as she exhales. “Well, not always.” Her head turns briefly in his direction. An acknowledgment of sorts. Then he gets only her profile again. “In any case, your ‘reports’ are wrong.”

“What happened?” he asks, but he already knows. He just wants to hear her say it.

“You left a rather large hole in our leadership as I recall,” she says, even-toned. If she’s impressed, she doesn’t sound like it. If he cares, he doesn’t admit it. “And few people to fill it.”

Finn smirks, can’t help it. He hadn’t come to antagonize her, but it’s easy to fall into old patterns. Not the oldest patterns he knows, but the closest to his heart. When all else fails, be a smartass to the enemy. He’d learned that from Han, from Poe, from General Organa, from himself, too, when he’d found the time to learn who he is. ‘Be a smartass to the enemy’ hadn’t often steered him wrong, but when he speaks now, it doesn’t feel like a victory. Not exactly. “I try.”

“What do you want?” She still doesn’t look at him, but that’s her mistake. He sees everything he needs to know anyway. The tension in her shoulders, the rigid curve of her spine, the solid line of her bicep beneath the fitted spacer shirt she wears beneath her vest. He sees it all. She’s tired; more than that, she’s defeated.

She looks the way he feels when he’s not careful about it.

The bartender finally approaches, rag in one hand, streaky glass in the other. He takes Finn’s order, perfunctory, and retrieves a bottle from the back wall with practiced, remembered ease. He plunks both the bottle and the glass onto the bar. Finn’s eyes trail after him as he saunters back toward more compelling company elsewhere. _Good man_ , Finn thinks, pouring his fill of Corellian brandy—something he’d picked up from General Organa, not that he’d ever want to admit it. Or she, for that matter.

“This has to end,” he says, tracing the whorled grain of the bar top with his fingernail.

“And what do you suggest?” she asks, voice slow and surprisingly deep without the helmet to modulate it, blonde hair falling across her forehead as she attempts to bore holes into the wall. He wonders what she finds there and considers asking. At least until he decides he doesn’t want to know. He already sympathizes far too much. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t—

“Call it off,” he replies, clipped, simple as ripping a bacta patch free. And just as painful. Something like guilt squirms around in his stomach. That he’s here and not back home…

“Why?”

Finn sighs, picks a sliver of wood free from the bar. “It’s done,” he says. _Save something out of all this_ , he thinks, pleading. _Save someone_. “You’re done.”

She finally turns to look at him, eyebrow raised, appraising. He should probably be surprised by the softness of her features, the round cheeks and the brightness of her eyes, but if he’s learned nothing else, it’s that monsters and heroes come in all sorts of unexpected packages. “I wasn’t aware of that,” she says. Her lips quirk, an aggressive smile forming on her face. Once, Finn might have been intimidated by it. Now he feels nothing.

“Then you’re less of a tactical genius than I was led to believe you are.”

“Insults,” she says, dismissive. “You can do better than that.”

Finn’s chin lifts as he, too, turns toward her, leans into her space. “Then how about the truth?” he asks, minutely pleased that she shifts back—so slight a movement he knows it’s not an accident. He nods, grim. General Organa certainly wouldn’t appreciate his candor, but General Organa isn’t here.

“My commanding officer doesn’t intend to stop until she’s wiped every last one of you out. I’m not sure I can blame her after the ideological dredges of the Empire skulked off and made—” He almost says _us_. The impulse is kneejerk and strikes him in the chest with the power of a blaster bolt. “—you.”

“Charming.”

“You’re bleeding troops. Got defections going all over the place.” He scrubs his palm over his mouth, buying himself a couple of seconds’ reprieve. It’s a gamble he’s taking here, but Phasma’s a pragmatist deep down and she—cares might be the wrong word, but she feels responsible for her people. Insofar as they are useful to furthering the First Orders aims. It has to have been hard on her to throw so many of her them into pointless conflicts, inevitable losses. “The clean-up’s gonna be long. And bloody.”

Her eyes narrow, understanding glinting there. “You don’t have the forces to finish the job.”

“Until recently we never had anything approaching the First Order’s numbers and that never stopped us,” he continues, serious. “I know every move you’re going to make. Do you really think we won’t eventually ‘finish the job?’”

She sips at her drink, more delicate and prim than her frame would suggest possible, and laughs, choked with bitterness. “I wish you would try,” she says. Finn doesn’t believe she means it, but the fact that she’d even say it. To him… He’s willing to push the advantage.

“I don’t want to.” And that’s a hell of a thing to admit to the enemy when he can’t even admit it to himself half the time. And to the rest of the Resistance… not a chance. “I never wanted to.”

“But you did.” She grimaces. “You have.”

 _You trained me to_. “I’ve had to.” He spits out the words, more vehement than he’d like. But he’s not a diplomat. Never has been. Better anyway to be truthful. Phasma still knows a thing or two about him, too. “There’s a difference,” he adds, a little more neutral.

“And what’s changed?”

Finn shrugs. “You’re here, aren’t you?” he asks. “You haven’t tried to kill or arrest me.”

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t make a disparaging sound, does nothing but down the rest of her drink and signal the bartender for another, her fingers whipping through the air in a quick, decisive flutter. The bartender nods, but only detaches himself from the throng of what Finn assumes is his regulars after a few more words are exchanged among the group.

“Same?” he grumbles, eying her like he wants to dare her to pick something more complicated.

She nods, holds the glass out for him, and nods again when it’s sufficiently full. Waits to speak until the bartender has gone again. “I ought to,” she says, swirling her drink, picking back up their own conversation.

The threat barely registers. She’s armed—of course she’s armed; Finn is, too—but her hands are nowhere near her side and Finn’s the quicker draw anyway. “But you haven’t. You came to hear what I had to say.”

“Not particularly.”

Finn blinks. He leans forward, trying to catch a glimpse of her expression, but her face is turned away and all he can see is her cheek shadowed by lowered eyelashes.

She climbs to her feet, slaps a credit chit onto the bar, her palm smacking hard against the wood. Her nails are ragged, chipped, the cuticles torn. The skin across her knuckles, red and raw. Finn had always thought—when he’d thought about it at all—that her hands, her features, everything about her, would be as pristine as the armor she wears. But that’s obviously not true. When she turns, he notes a thin line of scar tissue across her cheek, old. Almost invisible.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Finn says, earnest and unsure why he is. This had been a desperate measure at best, a half-formed idea if he’s being generous. Dangerous. But he’s sick of the death and destruction, of battles on worlds he’s never planted foot on, places he’d never heard of until intel came in that the First Order _might_ be there, and all he can do is send General Organa’s troops, starfighters, bombs to ensure they don’t remain. “How do you serve the First Order when you’re only ensuring its downfall?”

He hates feeling guilty about the enemy’s destruction, lies awake some nights, jealous that it’s so easy for everyone else to believe they’re doing the right thing at all times. While Finn… Finn’s stuck these days going through the motions of it and forcing himself to remember all the ways the First Order has to be destroyed. Completely and irrevocably. For what they’ve done. And what they’d do if they could.

Even though, in Finn’s mind, they already are the skeleton of a great power brought to nothing. Less than nothing even, because Phasma doesn’t know how to fight when every life is irreplaceable, must count for so much more than the miniscule value the First Order has always placed on its troops. She throws her people into battles they cannot win using strategies originally thought up by academically minded Imperials of a former age who’d had tens of times the numbers to work with, improved by her of course. The problem’s just she’s the leader of a regime that no longer exists.

The Resistance has won. This is just batting at a corpse.

 _Leave,_ he thinks. _Don’t make the Empire’s mistake. Settle down. Live the lives you should’ve had. The galaxy is a big place. We never have to find you._

“You’re still naïve,” Phasma says, not quite disappointed. Not quite anything. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“I’m trying to _save your sorry lives_. If that’s naïve—”

“It is,” she says. She claps her hand on his shoulder, squeezes hard, a warning. Bending close, pushing him into the stool, she says, “What’s left of the FN Corps call you a son of Vader. They refuse to recognize you by the name you’ve chosen or your designation. They are so ostracized by my other units I can’t even send them into battle without losing more of them than our projections suggest wise. Do you know why?”

Finn swallows. General Organa and Master Skywalker had taken to leaking stories about Vader—or, rather, the truth about his death and the life he’d led prior to his turn to the dark side—propaganda, they’d claimed, though Finn had had his suspicions. What would stormtroopers and officers care about Darth Vader after all? But Phasma’s meaning is easy enough to grasp regardless. The word ‘traitor’ rings through his head. “Maybe you should draw me a diagram,” he says, steady, sure. She cannot reach him, not with this.

With one final squeeze, her fingers threaten to leave bruises on his skin despite the thick fabric of his shirt. He fights the urge to shrug out from under her touch. “The First Order will survive victorious or fall. We will not give in.” She steps back, her body twisting away. “And they don’t want your mercy.”

“What do you want?” But what he really means is, _why are you here then?_

She snorts. “What is it your people say? May the Force be with you?”

“Yeah,” Finn says, biting his tongue to keep from saying anything else.

“Goodbye, Finn.” Attention drifting toward the ceiling, her head tilts in his direction, giving him another view of her profile. “I hope this is our last meeting.”

She doesn’t say it, but he gets her meaning regardless. _I don’t want to see your face across the battlefield._ Finn finds that idea laughable, expects just that will happen sooner or later. It is an inevitability. He doesn’t answer in kind and hers is no answer to his question, one last bit of spite on her part, he supposes.

She nods once, crisp with military precision, and strides toward the exit with equal particularity. More lives will be lost, more people Finn knows—or knew. More waste. More worlds caught in the crossfire. They could have ended this today, in spirit if not in fact.

He’d offered a hand, redemption, peace, shaky and unconventional though it might have been, and received nothing in return.

 _You are naïve_.

 _No, you’re just fed up with fighting_.

 _You’re not a fighter_.

He nurses his drink for a long while after that. Thinking about the long slog to triumph, the pointless suffering it’ll take to reach it. He keeps his eye on his chronometer and only once he’s sure Phasma’s reached the spaceport does he fish his own chit free from a pouch on his belt, let himself stop thinking about the work yet to be done. The chit clatters onto the bar, a gray rectangle of metal no different than the one she’d left. Pushing himself to his feet, he heads toward the door, nudging it open with his shoulder.

Blinking under the bright, sunny sky, he lifts his hand to his forehead, turns his head this way and that, seeing no one and nothing of interest as he heads toward the landspeeder he’d rented from the spaceport authorities. No sign of Phasma remains to suggest she’d even been here, that he’d even found a safe way to contact her, that this foolish encounter had even taken place. He has accomplished nothing that’ll help his friends or save anyone or end this fight.

But he’s tried. Walking across the sandy, hard-packed ground toward the speeder, heels kicking up dust, he can say that much for himself. Of all the regrets this war has left him with…

He can rid himself of this one at least.

He can do what he has to do.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at [spookykingdomstarlight.tumblr.com](http://spookykingdomstarlight.tumblr.com/). Come say hi if you'd like!


End file.
